Method of treating tobacco to improve its smoking properties and ash colour



United States Patent 1 Claim. ci. 131-140 This invention relates to a method of treating tobacco to improve its smoking properties and ash colour.

Smoking tobaccos, more particularly tobaccos used for cigars and cigarettes, are frequently treated with agents to give a white ash in order to improve the appearance of the latter. The agents used for this purpose which may, for example, be added to the normal sauces in appropriate proportions, are mainly magnesium or calcium salts of formic acid or acetic acid. Apart from the eflect of improving the appearance of the ash or turning the same white, however these substances influence the taste of the smoke and in some cases the aroma'of the unburned tobacco so that it'was hitherto possible to use such agents only to a limited extent.

To improve the tobacco burning properties, agents have also been added to the tobacco in the form of oxygenrich alkali metal salts or alkaline-earth metal salts, more particularly nitrates or carbonates, but their use is also accompanied by disadvantages, namely, in the case of nitrates the danger of the evolution of toxic nitrous gases and their chronically toxic secondary products, and, in the case of carbonates, the unpleasant effects due to the high alkalinity of these salts.

In order both to improve the appearance of the ash and the burning properties of the cigar or cigarette, the tobacco must also be subjected to a double treatment, once with the substance suitable for one, and once with the substance suitable for the other of these purposes.

These disadvantages and manufacturing complications have hitherto greatly limited the possible applications of these improvements.

The object of the present invention is to obviate the disadvantages and difliculties associated with the use of the hitherto known substances while completely maintaining the required eflect.

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According to the invention, the tobacco is treated with an alkaline-earth salts of organic peroxy peracids, pref erably magnesium performate. It has been found that owing to their richness in oxygen these salts have the property that the combustion of the tobacco substance impregnated therewith takes place at a much higher temperature with complete decomposition of the polycyclic hydrocarbons not required in the smoke, while at the same time producing an intensive white ash without any undesirable secondary effects.

In the case of the preferred use of magnesium salts of organic peroxy acids the latter decompose in the burning zone to form magnesium oxide which imparts a white colour to the ash with the simultaneous liberation of active oxygen which improves the combustion, and with the liberation of formic acid which improves the taste properties by fixing amines and other constituents.

The alkaline-earth performates are added to the normal sauces used for making the tobacco sauce, in proportions of 0.1 to 5% with respect to the weight tobacco to be treated, or are applied in appropriate quantities in the form of a suspension to the tobacco.

The invention thus enables the properties of a cigar or cigarette to be improved as regards the colour of the ash burning, with just a single treatment of the tobacco, and thus provides the possibility of the use of this improvement treatment without any disadvantages.

What I claim is:

A method for improving the smoking qualities of tobacco and the color of the resultant ash which comprises adding to the tobacco 0.1 to 5% by weight of magnesium performate.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 3,010,851 11/1961 Molde 131-17 FOREIGN PATENTS 1,180,320 12/1958 France.

670,855. 1/1939 Germany.

SAMUEL KOREN, Primary Examiner.

MELVIN D. REIN, Examiner. 

